“Dreaming again, Jimmy. My little dreamer.”
He put the butter beside his mother’s plate and sat down.
“Hurry up and eat your lamb while it’s hot. Why dont you try a little French mustard on it? It’ll make it taste better.”
The mustard burnt his tongue, brought tears to his eyes.
“Is it too hot?” mother asked laughing. “You must learn to like hot things. … He always liked hot things.”
“Who mother?”
“Someone I loved very much.”
They were silent. He could hear himself chewing. A few rattling sounds of cabs and trolleycars squirmed in brokenly through the closed windows. The steampipes knocked and hissed. Down the airshaft the furnaceman with grease up to his armpits was spitting words out of his wabbly mouth up at the maid in the starched cap—dirty words. Mustard’s the color of …
“A penny for your thoughts.”
“I wasn’t thinking of anything.”
“We mustn’t have any secrets from each other dear. Remember you’re the only comfort your mother has in the world.”
“I wonder what it’d be like to be a seal, a little harbor seal.”
“Very chilly I should think.”
“But you wouldn’t feel it. … Seals are protected by a layer of blubber so that they’re always warm even sitting on an iceberg. But it would be such fun to swim around in the sea whenever you wanted to. They travel thousands of miles without stopping.”
“But mother’s traveled thousands of miles without stopping and so have you.”
“When?”
“Going abroad and coming back.” She was laughing at him with bright eyes.
“Oh but that’s in a boat.”
“And when we used to go cruising on the Mary Stuart.”
“Oh tell me about that muddy.”
There was a knock. “Come.” The spikyhaired waiter put his head in the door.
“Can I clear mum?”
“Yes and bring me some fruit salad and see that the fruit is fresh cut. … Things are wretched this evening.”
Puffing, the waiter was piling dishes on the tray. “I’m sorry mum,” he puffed.
“All right, I know it’s not your fault waiter. … What’ll you have Jimmy?”
“May I have a meringue glacé muddy?”
“All right if you’ll be very good.”
“Yea,” Jimmy let out a yell.
“Darling you mustn’t shout like that at table.”
“But we dont mind when there are just the two of us. … Hooray meringue glacé.”
“James a gentleman always behaves the same way whether he’s in his own home or in the wilds of Africa.”
“Gee I wish we were in the wilds of Africa.”
“I’d be terrified, dear.”
“I’d shout like that and scare away all the lions and tigers. … Yes I would.”
The waiter came back with two plates on the tray. “I’m sorry mum but meringue glacé’s all out. … I brought the young gentleman chocolate icecream instead.”
“Oh mother.”
“Never mind dear. … It would have been too rich anyway. … You eat that and I’ll let you run out after dinner and buy some candy.”
“Oh goody.”
“But dont eat the icecream too fast or you’ll have collywobbles.”
“I’m all through.”
“You bolted it you little wretch. … Put on your rubbers honey.”
“But it’s not raining at all.”
“Do as mother wants you dear. … And please dont be long. I put you on your honor to come right back. Mother’s not a bit well tonight and she gets so nervous when you’re out in the street. There are such terrible dangers. …”
He sat down to pull on his rubbers. While he was snapping them tight over his heels she came to him with a dollar bill. She put her arm with its long silky sleeve round his shoulder. “Oh my darling.”
She was crying.
“Mother you mustnt.” He squeezed her hard; he could feel the ribs of her corset against his arms. “I’ll be back in a minute, in the teenciest weenciest minute.”
On the stairs where a brass rod held the dull crimson carpet in place on each step, Jimmy pulled off his rubbers and stuffed them into the pockets of his raincoat. With his head in the air he hurried through the web of prying glances of the bellhops on the bench beside the desk. “Goin fer a walk?” the youngest lighthaired bellhop asked him. Jimmy nodded wisely, slipped past the staring buttons of the doorman and out onto Broadway full of clangor and footsteps and faces putting on shadowmasks when they slid out of the splotches of light from stores and arclamps. He walked fast uptown past the Ansonia. In the doorway lounged a blackbrowed man with a cigar in his mouth, maybe a kidnapper. But nice people live in the Ansonia like where we live. Next a telegraph office, drygoods stores, a dyers and cleaners, a Chinese laundry sending out a scorched mysterious steamy smell. He walks faster, the chinks are terrible kidnappers. Footpads. A man with a can of coaloil brushes past him, a greasy sleeve brushes against his shoulder, smells of sweat and coaloil; suppose he’s a firebug. The thought of firebug gives him gooseflesh. Fire. Fire.
Huyler’s; there’s a comfortable fudgy odor mixed with the smell of nickel and wellwiped marble outside the door, and the smell of cooking chocolate curls warmly from the gratings under the windows. Black and orange crêpepaper favors for Halloween. He is just going in when he thinks of the Mirror place two blocks further up, those little silver steamengines and automobiles they give you with your change. I’ll hurry; on rollerskates it’d take less time, you could escape from bandits, thugs, holdupmen, on rollerskates, shooting over your shoulder with a long automatic, bing … one of em down! that’s the worst of em, bing … there’s another; the rollerskates are magic rollerskates, whee … up the brick walls of the houses, over the roofs, vaulting chimneys, up the Flatiron Building, scooting across the cables of Brooklyn Bridge.
Mirror candies; this time he goes in without hesitating. He stands at the counter a while before anyone comes to wait on him. “Please a pound of sixty cents a pound mixed chocolate creams,” he rattled off. She is a blond lady, a little crosseyed, and looks at him spitefully without answering. “Please I’m in a hurry if you dont mind.”
“All right, everybody in their turn,” she snaps. He stands blinking
